Paging Andy Card ...Or: From The "What If Paranoids Are Right" Department

Funny, in doing a Google search this morning, on the Obama Campaign for President, I couldn't find "A covert CIA Manipulation Program you can believe in", anywhere



Earlier this week, Adrian Chen, over on Gawker, brought to our attention the organization Wikileaks, and how the U.S. Government wants to put a serious ass-whipping on them.

Is the U.S. Government Spying on a Tiny Secret-Sharing Website?

Wikileaks.org is a website legendary in certain circles for posting documents people want hidden from the world. The Pentagon is not a fan. Now, Wikileaks is accusing the U.S. of spying on its editors.

[snip]

Wikileaks, which is run by a 9-person advisory board, has built a reputation based on its impressive record of posting secret documents like the ones that threaten the U.S. Army. These include emails hacked from Sarah Palin's private account, 570,000 pager messages from 9/11 and the infamous climate change scientist emails. They have also posted sensitive U.S. military documents—most prominently the standard operating procedures for Guantanamo Bay.

Holy Spooky Shadows Batman!



But wait, there's more!

Glenn Greenwald, today, has some startling info, in his "The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters";

A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month (.pdf) analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion in Germany and France -- in order to ensure that those countries continue to fight in Afghanistan. The Report celebrates the fact that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it -- so much for all the recent veneration of "consent of the governed" -- and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among their citizenry: "Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters," proclaims the title of one section.

[snip]

It's both interesting and revealing that the CIA sees Obama as a valuable asset in putting a pretty face on our wars in the eyes of foreign populations. It is odious -- though, of course, completely unsurprising -- that the CIA plots ways to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries in order to sustain support for our wars. Now that this is a Democratic administration doing this and a Democratic war at issue, I doubt many people will object to any of this. But what is worth noting is how and why this classified Report was made publicly available: because it was leaked to and then posted by WikiLeaks.org, the site run by the non-profit group Sunshine Press, that is devoted to exposing suppressed government and corporate corruption by publicizing many of their most closely guarded secrets.

[snip]

If that doesn't sound familiar to Americans, it should. At exactly the time when U.S. government secrecy is at an all-time high, the institutions ostensibly responsible for investigation, oversight and exposure have failed. The American media are largely co-opted, and their few remaining vestiges of real investigative journalism are crippled by financial constraints. The U.S. Congress is almost entirely impotent at providing meaningful oversight and is, in any event, controlled by the factions that maintain virtually complete secrecy. As I've documented before, some alternative means of investigative journalism have arisen -- such as the ACLU's tenacious FOIA litigations to pry documents showing "War on Terror" abuses and the reams of bloggers who sort through, analyze and publicize them -- but that's no match for the vast secrecy powers of the government and private corporations.

Holy Foreign-Policy-Mess-Waiting-To-Happen Batman!

It's almost as if The Bush Grindhouse still has an office putting alongside the new Obama Administration.

Or has the Obama team launched, based on their predecessors model, a new "White House Afghanistan Group"?

Maybe they'll have to dust off Rummy's Propaganda Agency plans to sail past this one

Paging Andy Card!


Bonus CIA Riffs

We Looked In the DIY Section, But Bob Vila Didn't Have A Handbook On It ...

Top Ten Cloves: Things About The New CIA Personality Test

Paid News Scandal Widens; CIA Said To Run Network Of "Blue Hole" Newspapers ...Detainees Forced To Work As Copy Editors Or Write Stories In Isolation; Old Typewriters With No Wite-Out Used

Breaking News! ...Leak of CIA Covert Prison System May Affect IPO, Franchising Rights ...Early Heavy Investment Cools In Wake of Story; North Korea May Trade Nuke Program For Multiple Prisons

A Fair and Balanced Meltdown

Oh, this is so sweet!

You gotta watch this video.

The longer this interview goes on, the more Faux News host Megyn Kelly, talking (or we should say, "freaking out") with Bill Burton of the Obama Campaign, melts down.

Megyn Kelly Loses It



As noted in the video, the fru-fru tizzy that has Kelly with, proverbially, Loony Tune steam coming out of her ears. is a Matted Sludge/Dead Campaign Express smear-of-the-week, pointing to a YouTube of a radio interview Barack Obama did over seven-years ago.

Martin Lewis, over on the HuffPo, sums it up pretty good;

You click and you link to a YouTube clip titled "Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered". The clip consists of some audio - with misleading extracts of text - to a 2001 Chicago public radio interview with a very studious Barack Obama in law professor mode discussing the limitations of the court and his belief that the legislative process is the appropriate way to pursue economic justice. (Which if memory serves - accords with the conservative preference to eliminate judges who legislate from the bench.)

This clip isn't as boring as watching paint dry. It's MORE boring. It's like watching paint PERIOD.

The phrase "Clutching At Straws" does not do justice to this very limp attempt by Drudge to erect something he can put up against Barack Obama. Alas - as Drudge is all too aware - it just won't stand up any more.

Naturally, the Right Wing Freak Show has been in a lather over it, ostensibly, to point fingers at to say the Stumblin' Bumblin' Fly Boy is right, he is a Socialist, with Faux News right there, with their fire-engine-red megaphone.

Now, in fairness, you can almost understand why Megyn Kelly melted down, on camera.

It's the final week of the campaign, and, to be cautious, things aren't looking good for the dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds.

They're getting nervous, jittery, snapping at shadows, not sleeping well, irritable, knowing the party is coming to an end.

Afterall, if the Democrat's ticket wins, they, in all likelihood, won't be getting the daily talking points from an Obama White House, they way they have from the Bush Grindhouse.

But they also may be worried for another reason.

An Obama White House may just knock Faux News off its' perch, to be nothing more than an annoying infomerical.

Destroying The Fox

During his speech at the Al Smith dinner last night, Barack Obama once again mocked Fox News, boosting an effort to destroy the power and influence of the conservative media networks, an effort that I consider to be every bit as significant as the destruction of the modern Republican party. As noted by Kos, this continues a theme for the week where Obama mocked Fox during the debate last night and then again in the upcoming New York Times Magazine in an article by Matt Bai. This is also the continuation of a recent theme for the Obama campaign: Robert Gibbs famously ambushed Sean Hannity after the last debate in Nashville, David Plouffe recently called them the "24-hour ACORN channel" and Bill Burton has been all over their network embarrassing them over and over.

Let's consider the strategy of this for a second, because it is really smart. Obama is laying the foundation of delegitimizing Fox as a respectable news network and openly making the case that Democrats and others in the news media have been afraid for so long to say out loud, that Fox News serves the sole purpose of Republican and right wing propaganda. While this may certainly sound like an obvious point to many of us on the left, it is something that has become a bit of a taboo for people to say out loud to mainstream audiences out of fear. For Democrats, the fear is that Fox will train their sights on them and further alienate them from Fox's core Bubba audience. For the rest of the media, it is a well documented fear of the Fox's heavy handed media relations machine that intimidates other journalists from writing critical stories about the network, leaving the only critical voices about the network to come from the left from filmmakers like Robert Greenwald.

The difference with Obama is that he is not afraid of Fox. Given the platform and opportunity to take them on, he is using it, unlike the Democrats on the past. In addition to the candidate and his campaign openly mocking the network, we know that Obama knows no fear of Fox because consistent with his moral code, he let Murdoch and Ailes know he didn't respect them directly to their face as Micheal Wolffe recounted in Vanity Fair.

Yes he did.

Murdoch was said to be livid that Obama didn't come in and kiss his ring.

After others intervened, Obama did, finally, go to meet Murdoch and Ailes

Tuesdays with Rupert

Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.

Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

Scroll back up and watch the video again.

It can appear that Bill Burton is having fun, getting Megyn Kelly blustering and blabbering, and watching her melt down.

Could be the first, of more to come.


Bonus Faux News Riffs

Spencer Ackerman: Sticking In My Eye

Jed L: Bill Burton Isn't Taking Any Bull From Faux News Channel

Mustang Bobby: Fact Checker on "Redistribution" Story

The Jed Report: WaPo Knocks Down The Latest McCain-FOX-Drudge Lie

Candidate Watch: Obama's Redistribution 'Bombshell'

Breaking! Obama VP Call Delayed - Piece of Paper With Name Lost

Sources tell The Garlic that the announcement of Barack Obama's vice president has been delayed, indefinitely, as chaos consumes Obama Headquarters in Chicago, searching for the piece of paper Obama "jotted" the name on.

"They're going crazy," offered one insider, close to the Obama campaign.

"They're rummaging through desks, emptying trash cans on floor, and they even have two interns sitting in the dumpster out back, going through every scrap of paper."

Unconfirmed rumors say that Obama wrote the name of his VP choice on the paper of a arugula wrap sandwich, a few days ago.

Staffers are attempting to confirm when the trash has been picked up last and are contemplating dispatching campaign staff to the city dump, to start the search there, just in case.

In addition to the campaign office, Obama's home and automobile have also been investigated.

Our source tells us that the campaign hasn't ruled out a hypnotist, to take Obama back to when he was eating the arugula wrap, to see if he can say the name, while in the trance.

More as this story develops.

Bonus Links

Top Ten Cloves: Things That Can Go Wrong With Obama Announcing VP Choice Via Email

Top Ten Cloves: Other Things Bill O'Reilly Will Do To Get Interview With Barack Obama

Top Ten Cloves: If Hillary Clinton Is A Monster, The Movies That Would Be Made About Her

Top Ten Cloves: Things That Can Go Wrong With Obama Announcing VP Choice Via Email

News Item: Text Messages and Tea Leaves

10. Intern in Obama Campaign communications gets creative, sends it out as a dirty limerick

9. RNC sends out fake email, saying Obama will have co-VP's - Paris Hilton and Britney Spears

8. If they are sending it this week, they better have the name "Michael Phelps" in the subject line if they want people to open it

7. Because its lengthy, or has a lot of hyper links, most service providers screen it out as Spam, and don't deliver it

6. For VP choice to work, you must forward email to 10 other persons, for good luck

5. Hillary sends her own email out, saying it would be cathartic to name her VP

4. Since he doesn't use computers, it will be weeks before Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain finds out about choice

3. Email gets intercepted and VP Choice is, suddenly, a new prince from Nigeria, and is asking for your help in retrieving $10-Million

2. Email announcement Plan B; Original plans were to put it out via clues with Scrabulous, on Facebook

1. Email gets hacked; Millions receive message that voting for Obama will add inches to your penis


Bonus Links

LA Times: Obama's VP choice imminent via website, e-mail, text message

CBS News - Rove: Obama Will Make Political Veep Pick; Suggests Choice Of Virginian Tim Kaine Would Be An "Intensely Political Choice" That Ignores Responsibilities Of Presidency

FiveThirtyEight: The Persistent Myth of the Bradley Effect

Top Ten Cloves: Ways Obama Campaign Can Re-Introduce Michelle Obama

Top Ten Cloves: Ways Obama Campaign Can Re-Introduce Michelle Obama

News Item: Michelle Obama Looks for a New Introduction

10. Have her do a memorial dance tribute to Cyd Charisse

9. Start rumors that she's in line to be next Moderator of Meet The Press

8. Place her in the Boston Celtics Rolling Rally and have her lead chant "Where is Kobe ... Where is Kobe"

7. For the July 4th holiday, set Michelle up in largest country fair, in a Fist Bump Booth

6. Have her start blogging, she quotes Associated Press content, they go after her, and she leads the Blogosphere to victory over the AP

5. To win over hardcore, Ron Paul rightwingers, have her chase Sean Hannity through parking lot

4. Tell 'The View' they have to dump Whoopie Goldberg and replace her with Michelle

3. Have her in a "Bake-Off" with Cindy McCain, only Michelle will use her own, un-plagiarized recipes

2. Announce Michelle will take over the rest of the years' tour schedule for Tiger Woods

1. If all else fails, one word - Rehab!


Bonus Links

Brilliant at Breakfast: Please don't turn her into Cindy McCain

The Brody File: EXCLUSIVE: Obama Expresses 'Deep Disappointment' in McCain's Silence on Wife Attacks

Alex Koppelman - Obama: "I think families are off limits"

James Joyner: Families Off Limits in Presidential Politics?

Ben Smith: Don't call it a makeover, and a warning for McCain

Obama-Wright, Part II ... Some Perspective

Well, Well, Well ...

We could go on a diatribe, on the extra distance one candidate has to go, that the other candidates do not, even though that candidate addressed the issue - repeatedly, publically, and in his own words.

The big breaking news last evening was that Barack Obama is going to give a major address to this morning on race.

From Marc Ambinder, over on The Atlantic;

"He is expected to recount, in detail, how he came to know Rev. Wright, how he came to admire Rev. Wright, the history and meaning of the Trinity church, and address the controversial remarks attributed to Wright.

He is also worried that Wright and church will get caricatured unfairly.

Since everyone is paying attention to Obama and race, the basic thought, according to advisers, is why not give a big speech about... Obama and race."

Thankfully, Ambinder refrained, but others didn't, of alluding to Mitt Romney's big moment, his big speech on "Mormonism" (See The Garlic's Romney Speech: Where's Leonard Pinth Garnell When You Really Need Him?)

Make-up Mitt delivered a snoozer, and only mentioned the word "Mormon" once.

Little worry about Obama on that front.

He's been in the big show for a while now, and, be it his 2004 Convention speech, or out on the stump, he's shown he can hit the fastball.

While the MSM, and Cable News, seems to take glee, in showing the montage of video clips of Reverend Wright (and the Freakshow is having a field day with them), they are often, in most cases, presented out-of-context.

It isn't discussed why Rev. Wright is angry, or hostile, only that he is, and he is Barack Obama's guy, therefore, Obama must endorse what Rev. Wright is saying.

And stating, for three-or-four days that he doesn't, isn't enough, hence today's big Obama speech.

We looked around the World Wide Web, the blogosphere and found some good posts, to counterbalance, better yet, to, hopefully, enlighten, the single-prisim people.


Some Perspective

From Melissa McEwan's "I Recommend Not Holding Your Breath, Either", over on Shakesville;

"We know Obama's minister's name because he told us. And until we all grow up and decide we're really going to have a country with a genuine separation between church and state, and no religious litmus tests, we are going to have candidates introducing us to their religious mentors, and various other ways of trying to out-god each other. This would certainly be as good a time as any to revisit the wisdom of that habit and engage in a little self-reflection on whether it's actually helping our country in any discernible way."

The Anonymous Liberal;

"I always figured that if Barack Obama's presidential campaign took off, media attention would eventually focus on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and some of his more colorful sermons. I was expecting it to be more of a general election, swiftboat type issue than an issue in the primaries, though. I guess I never really figured a Democratic rival would pursue an electoral strategy based on stirring up white resentment. A failure of the imagination I guess.

Conservative double standards are rarely as soul-crushingly obvious as this one. Hinderaker has no problem with Republican politicians associating themselves with (and indeed aggressively seeking the endorsement of) people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, and James Dobson, men who have track records of saying crazy, hate-filled things that Rev. Wright can't possibly compete with. Moreover, if we're looking for segments of society into which "irrationality has penetrated deeply," we need look no further than the conservative evangelical community which forms the base of the Republican party and to which Republican politicians endlessly pander."

And Dennis Perrin knocks one out of the park, hitting it dead-on, in his "Land of Chains";

"Amid all the righteous noise made about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it was David Gergen on Anderson Cooper's show who made the most pertinent observation. The veteran GOP operative with bipartisan ties informed the audience that black America is having a different conversation than white America, so one cannot apply the CNN, Fox, or MSNBC framework to African-American concerns.

That it took a power broker like Gergen to make this obvious, important point further reveals how fixed our "national dialogue" remains. This of course allows all manner of patriotspeak to flow unimpeded, for there's nothing that the Liberal Media loves more than to prove its nationalist bonafides. After all, who do you think keeps the American flag lapel pin industry in the, er, black?"

With kitchen sinks coming at him from all directions now, I hope the Superdelegates and DNC are paying attention.


Bonus Links

Transcript of Obama’s Interview on “NewsHour”

Andrew Sullivan: The Testing Of Obama

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes/TMV: Barack is Not White, Barack is Not Black” The Possible Gift in Being Bi-Racial

Kos: The Clinton civil war

Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones ...

Top Ten Cloves: Other Things Bill O'Reilly Will Do To Get Interview With Barack Obama

News Item: Bill O’Reilly Shoves Obama Staffer

10. Date Oprah Winfrey

9. Make substantial donations to MoveOn.org, Media Matters and DailyKos

8. Will give up his crush on Matt Damon, in favor of Denzel Washington or Samuel L. Jackson, or whoever is Obama's favorite

7. Get Fox to change it's slogan the day he comes on show to "Fair and Obama"

6. Create new, nasty culture war of Obama's choosing

5. Will go to any restaurant with Obama, and not be surprised

4. Let Obama write forward of new book: The O'Reilly Factor for Black Kids

3. Create line of loofahs and donate all profits to his campaign

2. Say Keith Olbermann's name, on-air, as much as Obama wants

1. Will dress up as Dumbledore for the interview


Bonus Bill-O Links

Crooks and Liars: Video of O’Reilly calling Obama staffer an “SOB” and “low class”

Chicago SunTimes: Sweet: Fox's Bill O'Reilly in confrontation with Obama staffer at rally. UPDATE

Bill O'Reilly - Amy Polumbo Lecherous Interview

Pundit Watch: 'Pinhead' 16-Year-Old Schools O'Reilly

Breaking News! O'Reilly, Al-Qaeda In Heated Argument Over SF Targets; Strike Date, Debut of 'Muslim Factor' In Jeopardy Over Dispute